


aftershocks

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 20:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: S2 AU where Fitz is the one who gets powers.





	aftershocks

Skye has to keep telling herself what she knows to be true. She feels like she’s barely keeping her grip on reality, because so much has changed in the last twenty-four hours.

Trip is dead. Raina is gone - dead or disappeared, she doesn’t know which. And Fitz?

Fitz is in quarantine.

Skye still doesn’t remember much of what happened beneath the surface of the alien city, certainly not enough for her testimony to be of any use to Coulson, who’s still trying to figure out what happened to all of his agents. The last thing she remembers, Raina had been dragging her into a chamber with a skylight. Then, nothing. But somewhere along the way, her place and Fitz’s had been switched, and _Fitz_ had ended up being alone with Raina and the obelisk.

Skye had woken up in a bed in the med bay, with Simmons fussing over a small cut on her arm (and also the fact that Skye’s been unconscious for twelve hours, which is Not Good). Skye doesn’t care about the cut, though, or whatever had caused her to pass out. She wants to get out from under Simmons’s scrutiny and find Fitz. If nothing else, Trip’s death has slid the rest of her life into terrifying focus.

She doesn’t have time to waste anymore. Skye had never really thought that she’d had much time in the first place, but this changes _everything_.

Fitz might be in love with Simmons, but Skye is in love with him, and he needs to know it. Especially if he’s going to be killed by whatever alien disease had ended Trip’s life, and maybe Raina’s too. She swallows back that thought. If Fitz was going to die, he’d have done it already… right?

She doesn’t want to ask Simmons. For all that she loves Jemma, Skye knows that the other woman is awful at comforting, and even worse at lying. If there’s a chance that Fitz will die, then Jemma won’t be able to keep her poker face, and Skye would rather not have her worst fears confirmed by her best friend.

Skye enters the quarantine area just as Coulson is leaving, and he gives her a grim nod as she steps closer to the glass room that Fitz is being held in. Fitz is in the corner, his head in his hands, and Skye taps on the glass to get his attention.

“Hey.” It’s a lame introduction, but Skye isn’t well-versed in talking about her feelings, and she doesn’t know how to bring up the whole ‘I might be in love with you’ thing.

“Skye.” Fitz looks shocked to see her.

“Hey, Fitz.” Skye rubs her fingers across the bandage on her arm, shifting awkwardly. “You okay?” Dumb question, Skye. Really dumb question. He’s in quarantine, and he had just watched Trip die. Fitz is not going to be _okay_.

“I…” Fitz tries to answer but ends up shrugging instead.

“Well, Simmons was telling me when she was fixing me up that she thinks she knows how to fix you. I didn’t really understand what she was saying. Something about genetic markers? So, um…”

“Yeah. She told me.” Fitz makes his way over to the glass, so they’re talking face-to-face instead of across the room. “She need to come take some blood, and then I guess we’ll know for sure.” He smiles weakly at her.

“That’s… that’s good.” Skye’s lost all of her nerve now. She can’t tell Fitz now, that’d be stupid, and unfair. He already has enough to deal with. He doesn’t need her adding onto his burden. And if he is dying, then will him knowing she cares for him make all that much of a difference?

“Yeah, it is.” Fitz’s smile flickers into something a little brighter than what he’d been wearing before, and that makes Skye’s heart hiccup.

“I’ll be back later, to see how you’re doing, okay?” She rests her hand against the glass, and Fitz places his palm against hers.

“Okay.”

Skye bites her bottom lip, and takes a step back.

( _I love you_ , she wants to say. But she can’t.)

\---

Everything is terrifyingly complex; everything is terrifyingly simple.

She needs to lie to Jemma, to save Fitz. At first Skye had wondered what the worst really could be if her suspicions are correct and Fitz really is an Inhuman, but then she had heard the way the team was talking about them, like they’re aliens. And okay, maybe they are part alien, but it’s _Fitz_. He’s not any less himself than he was two days ago.

Besides, Fitz has already been through a fire. People had thought when he had come back from the bottom of the ocean that he was somehow not Fitz anymore. But he was Fitz - is Fitz, will _always_ be Fitz. Just because he’s different doesn’t mean he’s bad, or wrong, and Skye isn’t sure who she trusts to see that. Jemma had already run away from him once because he was different, and Mack’s distrust of anything alien may send him packing, too.

Skye is not going to let the person she loves lose his two best friends because they are afraid of the ways he’s changed. She’s not going to let him go through the pain of putting himself back together again, because it’s only been a few months since he last shattered. Fitz cannot, _will_ not, be a part of their witch hunt.

So Skye lies for him.

She switches the blood. It’s not hard to do, not when her fingers are as nimble as they are and Jemma is as frazzled as she is. One moment, Fitz has changed, and the next, he has not. Everyone is relieved, and everything is fine.

He knows what she did. Fitz knows that she had seen the shaking, and he knows that _she_ knows that he is different.

He locks eyes with her, and Skye just nods her head.

( _I love you_ , she wants to say. But she can’t.)

\---

Of course, everything falls down, literally and figuratively. Fitz is stolen out from under her nose and Skye’s _mother_ , of all people, tries to corrupt him. She tries to take Skye’s best friend and warp him into a weapon.

Fitz is stronger than Jiaying, though. He is stronger than anything they can put him through, and not just because his powers are formidable. He is stronger, because he is _Fitz_ , and he is good. He is Fitz, and he will not bow to darkness - not when there is still a chance for there to be light.

She holds him when it is all over. He has fought a war, and done so much of it on his own. Skye doesn’t know how things would’ve changed if she had admitted her feelings earlier, if she had fought beside him.

He is in her arms now, though, and that is all that matters.

 _I love you_ , she wants to say.

So she does.

“Fitz?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

She kisses him, and he kisses her, and once again, things are different.

(Once again, change has proven itself to be a good thing.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @leopoldsjames on tumblr for the AoS Rarepair Exchange 2018.


End file.
